“Rosie and I were very young when our parents died in a house fire. I remember them pretty well, though the memories have faded over the years. We don’t have much left from them, some photos and things and these necklaces,” Roxie reached into the neck of her shirt to grip the chain and hold up the crescent moon and R pendant. She let Hunter look for a moment before dropping it, the pendant glittering in the light on her shirt.
“We had no other family, it was just the two of us against the world. We were first put in a foster home, and then another and another. At first it wasn’t bad, we ran into a few bad foster homes but there were few that really had the bad kind of people you see on TV or in movies. We were just… a very unlucky two, few take on siblings together, and so those in for a pay check from the state were the ones who didn’t mind the two of us most. I can’t remember how many bad ones we really got put into but it was enough that I can clearly remember nearly every time I stood in front of Rosie while some drunk or angry or just mean foster parents went at us with a scolding or a hit or a few hits and more… that was a lot. We usually got out after a time or to, reported it the next time a social worker came around. It was after too many bad foster home experiences they started throwing us in orphanages between homes. It was Sunny May’s were it all went wrong.”
“Rosie told me about the fire, and you two getting separated after it. How Ella was with you in the fire…”
Roxie looked thoughtfully sad for a moment. “Yes she told you all she knew… which wasn’t very much. You see Sunny Mays was and probably still is… a corrupted establishment. The head of the house at the time was a wicked woman who was rumored by us girls to have grown up the in the foster system all her life as well. She was a horrible person and she saw a business opportunity in being able to control where the girls of the orphanage were sent next.
“The night of the fire was the night Ella and I discovered what she had been doing, though only for a seemingly short time, at the orphanage.”
“A business opportunity,” asked Hunter feeling slightly sick though his anger was quickly replacing the need to rid his stomach of its contents.
“Yes… she’d started it a few months prior to our finding out about it, she was doing a pretty good job at hiding it, she had connections in all the right places to do something truly horrible and she used them. It may sound unbelievable, one of the reasons you’re the first outside Ella, them, and I to know the story, but believe me it’s all true.”
Hunter looked at her for as long as he could while driving and said, “I’d believe you if you said the moon was made of cheese Rox, you don’t have to worry about me thinking you’re telling me a tall tale. You may have to worry about me murdering someone if this goes where I think it goes though…”
A humorless laugh left Roxie’s lips and she shook her head. “Don’t do anything stupid like that. These people deserve to rot in jail, not get the pleasure of death. They were redirecting the girls to bad foster homes, and adopting them out to whatever pedophile wanted them for money. Half the staff was corrupted as she was, and the other half was completely oblivious. Anyone who caught on found they were jobless the next day. The only thing they didn’t do was killing, or succeed to kill that is, until now.”
The dots connected. “The Sunny May girls that are turning up dead.”
Roxie nodded grimly. “Yes, all those girls are ones I saw in the files the night Ella and I went into the office. Everyone else was gone for the night, or supposed to be. Those files… Roxie and I were in them as candidates as well as Ella. We were almost caught when the director entered with these two men and we hid in the closet. Then we were caught, noticed by the director and the entire building was locked up and set on fire. It was their only way to get rid of all the evidence…”
“The fire was a cover up.”
“Yes, but we escaped.”
Hunter back tracked, “Then why did you move away after? Why didn’t you tell anyone? Why didn’t you-,” Roxie cut him off.
“If you’d let me finish I’d tell you.”
He sighed and smiled lightly, the movement strained on his face. “Go ahead, I’m sorry.”
Playing with the necklace absent mindedly Roxie picked up where she left off. “This is the part where it really gets… unbelievable. If I didn’t live it myself I never would have thought it could happen but… the director had friends in a mental institution, a hospital where people who aren’t right in the head are sent. The night after the fire, before I got a chance to tell the police the truth, when the doctor’s finally allowed me to see anyone the director showed up sent me to. Marcbridge Psychiatric Hospital, my own personal hell on earth, and Ella was already waiting. I was drugged, pronounced traumatized, mentally unstable, and a suicide risk and put on constant watch and drugs to keep me from being able to think straight or do anything that would involve telling the truth about the fire and the files or escaping.”
Hunter’s hands had gone white around the steering wheel, noticeable dents being made in the circle. “They did what?”
“Hunter… calm down,” she put her hand on his shoulder noticing vaguely that his temperature was high and his eyes were a slightly different shade. His wolf wanted to come out and rip anyone who had threatened and hurt their mate to shreds and then rip the shreds into shreds and those into dust and burn the dust to ashes.
“They will pay,” he growled.
This is so short, I'm a horrible person. I'm sorry.
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Mate of Honor
Werewolf*WattyAwards2012 Finalist* Running from a dark secret, Roxie has spent her life protecting and caring for her twin sister, Rosie. Now that Rosie is getting married to a werewolf, Roxie is forced to interact with people who could reveal her secre...
